UCU re-ballots: one day left to order replacement papers

If you have not received your papers, you can order replacements to your preferred address using this form - but you need to do so by 5pm tomorrow, Thursday 31 March. 

Branches will have important decisions to make about next steps at the sector conferences in April, once the re-ballots have closed. But whatever your branch's delegates decide to do next, the fundamental issues animating each dispute are real and they are not going away. 

Thousands of the members who responded to our brief survey last month told us that workloads and pay were key issues motivating them to consider leaving the sector, and casualisation was unsurprisingly a priority for a huge number of respondents too. 

Every year across UCU's sectors we see individual employers reach agreements with their UCU branch on each of those issues. If your branch is in the Four Fights dispute, your vote is an integral part of our efforts to achieve something even bigger than that: a sector-wide agreement that holds around 150 of the employers we negotiate with to a common set of standards on pay, workload, casualisation, and equality.  

No UK union has got as close as UCU to winning anything like that in years - but it will not happen without an even stronger mandate for industrial action. Take another step towards that goal by posting your vote as soon as you can. 

USS 

As far as pensions are concerned, UCU's position in the USS dispute is reinforced by the current financial situation of the scheme. As of February 2022 the estimated contributions required to fund future benefits were a lot lower than the amount required under the 2020 valuation. That valuation, which was conducted at the start of the pandemic, is obsolete - but employers are still using it as a pretext to slash the guaranteed retirement benefits you build up in future by a third or more. 

Some employers are starting to join UCU in calling for a new valuation, but we need to make more employers get off the fence to achieve a breakthrough. That is where your vote in these re-ballots can make a big difference, so post your papers today if you haven't already. 

As I write, many UCU branches are taking action in furtherance of both disputes. If your branch is re-balloting but does not currently have a mandate for action, don't forget to support your colleagues who are on strike by donating to the UCU fighting fund. 

In solidarity

Jo Grady
UCU general secretary